Thoughtful and candid discussion and commentary on the performing arts by "those who do." This is a forum meant to reflect what's currently on the minds of working actors, directors, designers, producers and writers.

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2nd Look

For at least two years before the birth of Extra Criticum, it seems that my old pal Robert Sullivan had been prodding me to start blogging. “You need a blog. Every writer should have a blog. Have you thought about starting a blog yet? I really think you ought to consider it.” I don’t know why I resisted. Well, actually, I do. I resisted the idea of starting my own blog because it struck me then as somewhat narcissistic. A journal of my thoughts, feelings and opinions—not to mention mundane actions—posted online for all the world to see? Why bother? What a bore!

So I told Robert the only way I would consider blogging was if it was a group undertaking. I didn’t want to create a space where all the musings of one Roland Tec would be posted ad nauseum. I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I could do so in the company of good friends and colleagues.

A certain consensus seems to
get agreed upon about movies before they recede into the past. A combination of
popularity and critical response are the primary ingredients, and it’s usually
more-or-less right. Movies like The Last
Emperor or Crash may capture the
zeitgeist enough to walk off with a Best Picture Oscar, but they tend to
disappear as time goes on. Whether this is because they are beautiful but
somewhat ephemeral (The Last Emperor)
or thuggishly manipulative and self-important (Crash), time takes care of what we could not see in the moment.

The opposite, however, happens
as well. Really wonderful films get disregarded and slip away largely unseen.
It’s a shame, so I’ve decided to do my small part to undo the process and pick
out five films that I think have been unfairly maligned. I’m sure everybody
has some version of this list in their mind (I could probably get to 20 without
breaking a sweat), but here’s mine:

One of the perks of being married to my wife is that she loves old movies. At the end of a long day, knowing we don’t have enough concentration to work through the Netflix queue, she’ll often say “What’s on TCM?” Then we check out Turner Classics in hopes of finding something familiar that we can enjoy awhile before schlepping off to bed.

I have a reputation for being a bit of a contrarian. It’s not unearned, but I don’t think I’m reflexively contrary. I like plenty of popular things. For example, I’d happily posit The Matrix as the greatest science fiction film ever made.

That said, I am a little suspicious when everyone agrees on something. It doesn’t happen very often, culturally speaking, and it makes me wonder what buttons are being pushed, what complexities are being glossed over. Which brings me to Steig Larsson and his The Girl Who…trilogy.

Just back from seeing Twyla Tharp's Come Fly Away, her Frank Sinatra tribute. Midway through Act II, an Irving Berlin song started playing and I found myself thinking of Lady Gaga, of all things. This song, in particular:

With LOST giving it up Sunday night in a pop culture gorge-fest, naturally I started to think of other notable finales.

The best, of course, the mother of all final episodes, is MASH. Moving, funny, incredible and sometimes painful (if your heart doesn't break for Hawkeye and the "chicken", you are dead), it rounded out the moving, funny, incredible and sometimes painful (particularly in the last couple seasons when Preachy took over from Funny in the writer's room and minor characters were given major roles too often - there's a reason that some of them were written to be minor - Klinger is only funny/interesting in a dress - out, not so much of either).

Each character got an ending that fit them (such as Charles, who had always been the music snob, could no longer listen to his records without remembering the quartet of musicians who died from a roadside bomb), and nothing felt off or rushed.

Diva (1981) existed in my psyche as one of the most
beautiful films ever and a paragon of cool. I remembered the unlikely romantic
couple strolling through a blue-hued Paris at dawn accompanied by a Satie-esque
piano piece. I remembered that there was a song from some obscure opera. Ahhhh...
the music. I remembered it was a stylish film, pleasing to look at, full of great
sets and interesting objects, like that beautiful, vintage, white Citroen.
Mostly I remembered the punk, “Priest,” the fantastic Dominique Pinon who would
later dazzle me in Delicatessen and make me think he was some kind of French re-incarnation of Charlie
Chaplin. His was the face on the poster and on the soundtrack LP. Like any punk worth his safety pins, he was full of disdain. In fact, most of his lines begin with, “I don’t
like…” Discovering the music he had pumping into his earpiece was to me one of
the great cinematic jokes.

OK. So, readers of this blog may be surprised (or alarmed?) to see this headline and my byline together in the same post. Those familiar with Rolando Teco's biases know that visual spectacle does not thrill me in the way that, say, authentic human conflict does.

So it dawned on me as I sat transfixed at my window, watching the drama and chaos and sheer beauty of another snowstorm, that I do appreciate some fireworks of the visual sort every now and then. So, here, in totally random order, are my top 10 picks for most stunning, memorable and breathtaking.

I'll admit it. When I first saw the film adaptation of The Boys in the Band, I loved it. I knew I wasn't supposed to, of course. I was in college at the time. My first boyfriend had instructed me that the politics of Mart Crowley's play (and subsequent screenplay) were all wrong. "Self-loathing" and "Internalized Homophobia" were the buzzwords at get-togethers of the Lesbian, Gay and Transgendered Student Association on campus.

So I did what any self-respecting newly-liberated young homo would do. I kept my feelings to myself.

Full disclosure: a friend of mine was in this series and another friend of a friend wrote it. So, naturally, I was curious to take a 2nd look at a show that I'd seen only a few episodes of when it first aired on HBO. When my b.f. gave me the DVD as a gift, we seized the opportunity to watch the entire series -- the lone single season -- start to finish.

Frequent readers of this blog may recall my waxing hyperbolic about the unparalleled level of subtlety in the writing for Matthew Weiner's Mad Men on AMC. So, it came as a wonderful surprise to encounter equally subtle directing and acting on the short-lived Lisa Kudrow vehicle, The Comeback.

The hot TV series of the moment, Mad Men, is set in 1963, the same
year that Julia Child debuted on public television with The French
Chef. Coincidentally, Child is a hot pop culture icon again (not that
she ever really went cold), thanks to the book and film Julie &
Julia. Would she have any affinity for Mad Men’s impeccably dressed but
emotionally hollow protagonist Don Draper?

While waiting for
another Mad Men episode, I started in on a “best of” DVD collection of
The French Chef, which opens with perhaps her most famous episode, “The
Potato Show.” This is the one in which she tries to flip a large potato
pancake, which breaks apart on the way down and ends up half outside
the pan. “You can pick it up when you’re alone in the kitchen,” she
says to the camera as she grabs the errant pieces and puts them back in
the pan. “Who is going to see?”

I haven’t seen Martin Scorcese’s After Hours since it came out in 1985 and I was a 21-year-old who had never been to New York. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time in Manhattan and have met plenty of strange characters after midnight, so I get the movie in ways I didn’t before.

For example, I now get the joke about New Yorkers seeing neighborhoods outside of their homes and workplaces as mystifying, and often terrifying, places. I loved the shots of street signs near the end of the film, showing Griffin Dunne’s progress from SoHo to Midtown. When I lived on 180st Street, I often had the experience of watching the numbered streets go up, from the window of a cab or subway train, and feeling that I was inching ever closer to the comfort of my bed. Another favorite After Hours image was the Mr. Softee ice cream truck, turned sinister when lit by street lamps instead of the noontime sun.